Willingness To Communicate Scale Reliability And Validity Study

Communication is one of the important elements, affecting the lives and, in a sense, shaping the place of individuals in the society. However, this shows parallelism with the individuals being willing to communicate. Differences can be observed in social life between the individuals who are open and willing to communicate and individuals who are more restricted and closed to communication. In this study, performing the reliability-validity study of “Willingness to Communicate” scale, which was developed by McCroskey (1992), for Turkey was aimed. Since there are no measuring tools available in Turkey to measure the willingness of individuals to communication, this study was aimed to become a tool to be used in interpersonal communication researches to be performed in Turkey. The study was performed on 204 samples consisting of different professions. Population and sampling individuals who are literate and have no restrictions in communication are included in the research. Considering to be effective on communication levels in a sense of individuals, the scale included four profession groups (self-employed, working in education, working in health and office workers) consisting of 90 women and 114 men in the research. Necessary permissions for the study were obtained from Necmettin Erbakan University Social Sciences ethical committee. As for the participants, verbal consents were obtained from each of them. Data were collected between 15th February and 1st June, 2016. The scale consists of 20 questions which the 12 of them are original and 8 of them are filler questions. In the analysis of data, Mean Standard Deviation, Pearson Moment product, Cronbach Alpha and Exploratory Factor Analysis were used. The scale, developed by McCroskesy (1992) consists of 7 sub factors but as a result of the exploratory factor analysis, it was transformed into 12 basic item oriented 3 factor structure. These sub-factors were named as; making presentation to familiars and friend groups (.79, .77, .74, .67, .54), talking with strangers (.82, .80, .75), talking with familiars and friends (.81, .78, .55). When the items of sub-groups are examined, it was seen that factors range in accordance with item structures. Making presentation to familiars and friend groups sub-factor consists of items 19, 15, 20, 14, 11; talking with strangers sub-factor consists of items 3, 17, 8, 12; talking with familiars and friends sub-factor consists of items 9, 4, 6. Cronbach alpha value of the scale was measured as .88. According to the results, it is seen that the scale has valid and reliable measuring ratios.